Twisted Times: Son of Man (Twisted Times Trilogy Book 1) (7 page)

Diplomats, ministers, members of Parliament and the whole riffraff of who’s who attended the obsequies. The President was in the US thus the Vice President represented him, but the Prime Minister could not fail to attend the funeral ceremony.

The press formed a good part of the mourners with a sea of cameras, microphones and notebooks. Every media house wanted to have first-hand information on the entombment of the slain minister.

The bereaved praised the deceased for his magnanimity, faith and industry. They had lost a friend, father, husband, brother, and relative. The country had lost a leader and a great politician.

Security chiefs vowed not to rest until they nabbed and put to justice the killers of the Late Hon. James Oking’ Adoyo, Minister for Finance. Internal Security minister promised to make sure that cases of insecurity were dealt with stringently. 

The Prime Minister pledged to see the family of the deceased minister was protected by the government since it had become a target. He even hinted that the government will nominate the widow to the august house so as to keep her husband’s legacy.

It was such a tragic end for a man who was lauded to take the mantle of the country one day.

Amongst the mourners was a man on a mission. The man was here to do close reconnaissance for the J-O-B to be done later that night.  He smirked as the grand imported casket that had cost the government quite a fortune was lowered electrically in to the grave. What a waste of taxpayers’ money.

The man focused on the woman in barrister-black funeral robes, dark Ray-Bans and a black veil swathed from head to toe. She was absolutely the widow. People die daily and nobody gives them all this pomp, the man thought.

The widow and the kids were placing their wreaths on the grave. They too would get the same pomp when they died. That was the legacy that the Prime Minister meant, the man concluded.

It is much harder for a poor coward fool to enter the kingdom of money and riches than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.
Urbanas’s words reverberated in my head over and over. The kid had a way with words. He had almost convinced me. All what he had said was all coming back to me. It was hard to forget; each and every single word he had said.

I could not believe I was doing what I was doing. First, I hated the rush hour procrastination. Every time I glanced at my wrist watch it was as though time was on a rush to hit the 24-hour mark. I could not wait any longer.

I got out of the
matatu
and decided to cover the remaining distance on foot… moreover it was just ten minutes’ walk to the public rest place at the Co-operative Bank grounds near the 1998 bomb blast memorial park on Haile Selassie Avenue.

“I knew you would come,” he said even without looking at me as I sat next to him on the concrete bench under a cool shade of an exotic tree at the far end of the park. He didn’t even look up from his Robert Ludlum’s
Bourne Supremacy
novel.

“What makes you think I came for what you are thinking?” I asked him.

“For nothing else would you have told me to meet you.”

“So you say.” I shifted my well exercised figure on the hard bench. He marked where he was reading and closed the novel. It was an indication that I could say it all; he was ready for me. “Let’s get this straight with. What am I supposed to do?”

I listened keenly as he told me of my role in the whole business. By the time he was done, everything was a hodgepodge, thoughts juggling each other in my head. I had just given in to profanity, immorality – and to put it blatantly, to crime; succumbed to the temptations I had fought so hard. I had just let the devil win.

Reminiscences of my encounter with Urbanas the previous week kept on coming and going as though they were competing with lightning.

“I have got a proposition for you…” That’s how he begun. “Lots and lots of money.”

I listened attentively to each and every single word that came out of his golden mouth. When he was done I blurted out that I couldn’t.

“What do you think I am…? Lara Croft the tomb raider?”

“See through what I’ve just told you.”

“You do not even have moral guilty robbing such places?”

“Man has to overcome the inherent human fears so as to venture in anything termed impossible by people.”

“Are you trying to come up with another definition of the word impossible?” I said and continued, “Because you don’t appeal to me.”

He said nothing.

I continued. “They all admire you
… we
all do. Why do you…”

“Shhh! Do you know the best place to hide in this world? It’s in people’s hearts. Let them trust you, build and fortify that trust, speak against human fears and tragedies, promise a plausible paradise knowing that hell is real. Even Satan was party to heaven before God feared He might lose His power to Satan…”

“Why are you telling me all this? To have me in your camp? I already told you it’s NO, and I mean it.”

“You are just feigning to be naïve. Your eyes are open but you just close them. Just for once look at the human rights activists, environmentalists, and philanthropists or whatever they call themselves, and all of the make-believe good guys we’ve idolized. They are just hiding; no one will ever know what they are, but we adore them for what they really are not. The best place to hide is where the trail of one’s activities lead to the path trailed by saints…”

At that very minute I thought of all the glory the media had given Urbanas. It had been in the news, all the media houses carried his face to the screens, and millions of Kenyans saw the face of the kid who had won the SANU elections, as though it mattered outside the walls of the University of Nashville.
The best place to hide? In the hearts of people.

It all dawned on me now.

I did not want to be party to something that was morally wrong, especially if it was crime. It was against what I believed in. I just told him to forget it and that I was inexorably disappointed in him.  “What would they think if they knew what you really are?”

“Sometimes secrets are not what people don’t tell… many a time it’s the difference between the mask we put on for the world to see and what we really are. No one would ever know me. Never. I shall go with it to the grave.”

“I already know…”

“Forget it, Kennedy. Many of the accidents that happen daily are not what we see, there’s more to accidents than it catches the eye.”

“Are you trying to threaten me? Because I don’t respond to threats.”

“Threaten you? Sweet Jesus. I’ve got better things to say than threaten you. It’s just a precaution.”

We went back to where Arnold was waiting for us. I resented Arnold for all what he had done. I vowed to even never talk to him again. Never. It were better the friendship be no more.

A week later I ended up telling Arnold to arrange a meeting for me with Urbanas.

Just do it.

Don’t even think about it.

Just do it.

Do it.

It was unerringly 11:55 p.m. when Arnold dimmed the headlights of the Datsun pick-up van. We were four of us less Urbanas. Urbanas was the boss, he took care of the obstacles that might hinder our operations. The authorities listened to him. They always listened to student leaders of state universities.

The gate to the cemetery was un-manned and Arnold got out of the car and pushed it open. The pick-up took the murram road into the dark derelict compound. It was a dark moonless night, and so we had the guarantee of being unseen. The congenital human fear of such places gripped me, and I trembled with trepidation.

The whole aura of such places engrossed us, or rather me for I was feeling ghosts all around reaching out to touch me.
Just do it. Don’t even think about it.

We set to work on the fresh grave that I showed them. We shovelled quickly in turns, and within few minutes, the coffin became visible. It was golden featuring a silver medallion all round.

“Such a waste!” it was one of the other guys whom I was introduced to when I joined the fold. He was Jackson Muiruri from Naivasha. “How can we let this go to waste in the polluted soil of Nairobi?”

Arnold smiled sardonically, and I thought what he was thinking was what I was thinking – the money from tonight’s raid.

We took a five-minute respite and then prepared to haul up the casket. The task proved to be more easily said than done than I had anticipated. It was eminently heavy and we heaved and tugged for a quarter an hour before it rested higgledy-piggledy atop the mould of earth.

The sight of the dead almost made me throw up. He was a man, undoubtedly who had had some exotic blood flowing through his veins during his earthly days. Once the coffin was no longer his he was tossed back to the grave and given a primitive burial.

“May the soul of our
brother
rest in peace,” Arnold said as he threw the last spade full of soil on the grave. The deceased had had the privilege of getting two obsequies. Not many got the chance.

As I climbed at the back with the other guy, a rogue from Kibera whom I knew as Dickson, famously known as Dick as in dick especially to the girls, I took in a deep breath and stared into the dark home of the faithful departed. What a travesty?

“Wait for your cheque,
Son of Man
,” it was Arnold as he rounded the car to take the co-driver’s seat.

I had completed my first job.

It was a Sunday morning. I was feeling as though I had been run over by a truck. I couldn’t be feeling better after the previous night’s hard labour with
out
strokes of the cane. I was preparing to go to church. That’s when she called.

“What are your plans after the service?” she asked. 

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, brother. Don’t always be the hard to get type of person. I just…” she paused. “Forget I asked.”

“To forget is very easy for me,” I said indifferently. “What bowls me over is the fact that I never knew I had a sister this big.”

“Son of Man, you’ve got a very dry sense of humour yet I find you indulging.”

I said nothing.

“Tell me something I don’t know Ken, or you like SOM better?”

“Whichever, but if you don’t want to hurt me stick to Ken. So, what don’t you know?”

“You.”

“I never knew I was something.”

There was an awkward silence from her side before she said, “I don’t know anything about you.”

“My plans were to tell you about myself today after the service, if there’re no those prayer meetings of yours after the service.” I lied.

“You are not making that up… tell me you are serious.”

“Remember I do have a very dry sense of humour.”

Well, the after service, prayer meeting was there, but she promised to boycott. Sounded like a plan to me, though I was cornered. I did not expect her to miss a prayer meeting to be with me. I had hoped it would be an excuse for me not to go to church with her, but guess I was going to make a trip to the Nashville University chapel for the service simply because I felt I owed it to Terry.

She was clad in those church gowns her Christian group had bought for everybody in the group. They wore them on Sundays and when attending other church related functions.

From that day she saw me sleeping and hypothetically talking in my sleep she had become more attached to me. She asked me to be attending their prayer meetings at the chapel if, and when, I had the time. It was just two weeks since then, and I was feeling that she was getting fixated with me to the extend of doubting her motives.

At the chapel, as usual, they read both the old and new testaments with two readings from the New Testament, the Catholic Church tradition, and as usual I slept during the sermon. It was almost one o’clock in the afternoon when the Mass was over. She invited me over for lunch at her place.

“What do you think of an evening together? I would very much appreciate.”

She’s damn famished…
“Maybe, maybe not.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Forget I said.”

“I don’t know how to forget.”

“It’s not what I meant… I would like to, but I don’t know what to say.”

“I’ll do everything, even the talking. You just sit there and let everything happen.”

And I was of the opinion that OTTYs had working class men whom they had every week?
I wondered what she really wanted from me.
God, let it be not what I am thinking.

A rather sadistic thought crossed my mind; not just sadistic but carnal. If what I was thinking was what she was really thinking I felt as though I was in some kind of a porn movie.

Terry’s room was adorned with flowers and pictures of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Holy Family, and saints. There was a statue of the Virgin Mary dressed in white and pale blue on her study table.

“Ken, this is my...”

“I can see,” I said before she could say what she wanted.

“So, feel at home. I will be back in five minutes.”

She put the stereo on and the cool and snooze RnBs from
Easy FM
played. I felt at home. She shimmered away after pouring some juice in a wineglass for me. Five minutes or so later, she came back in black hipster pants and a sleeveless top. The church girl was erased, no longer looking like Mother Theresa. She sat opposite me, and looked at me straight in the eyes.
She’s beautiful
. 
She likes me
.

She wanted to know me better according to her,
how come I called myself Son of Man, my family background and generally my life.

“From the time you told me that you are called SOM I’ve wanted to know more about you. Could you be Jesus?” she asked jokingly.

Terry was jolly, chaffy, good-humoured and loquacious. All what she wanted was to have me in her Christian Union Society. Seriously!
What a waste of my precious time.
She said that she just liked me, I seemed to be a good guy, and she wanted to help me. Her help involved pulling me to her Christian club. I could not. My religious penchant by a long way changed when I left seminary. 

I was sorry that I couldn’t. I just told her that I could not be actively involved.

Terry was a staunch Roman Catholic from the outskirts of Nairobi, from a family of four. Her father was a lawyer by profession and working in the Ministry of Finance, and her mother a business lady. She was the last born, the only girl.

She called me her brother and although I did not join her Christian encampment, she was good to me. She introduced me to her friends, but I was smart enough to put on my mask effectively. Could they know that I was a criminal?

She said, “Brother, if you need anything just tell me. I’m terribly sorry about what happened to you.”

“No. Do not fret yourself about me. I’m just fine.”

“Sure you are fine. How fine if you don’t even have a home to go to?”

“Believe me. I am fine.”

She did not buy it. She wanted to reach out and help. I officially became her benefactor, probably her charity programme, and her younger brother.